


Commemoration Days

by rm (arem)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:12:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack commemorates everything while Ianto keeps lists, mainly out of self-defense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commemoration Days

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Hllangel for the team's birthdays from Torchwood Magazine. Threewalls has subsequently made me aware that Ianto's birthday differs between _Fragments_ and the TWM info; I'm working off of the TWM info at this point - so please attribute that to the utter lack of data integrity within the TW universe or canon as you see fit.
> 
> The unnamed wife and kids refers to Annie from _A Holiday of Bright Mornings_ and the related fics. The scene here owes some debt to Airspaniel for pointing me towards the traditional song _Foreign Lander_ as done by Red Molly which she and Redstapler described to me as "Jack/Annie OTP!" (and they were right).

Jack Harkness celebrates a lot of birthdays. Mostly of dead people. Usually because he's utter crap at remembering such things while they're still alive. It's not like he's prone to cultivating a particularly large social circle, and all in all, he expects most would agree he has a fair number of reasonable excuses for that.

For one thing, Jack doesn't sleep much these days, and these days have been going on quite a while now. Makes it a bit hard to keep track of the calendar, really, even if saying it would make him sound like a cad. For another, it's not like Torchwood respects the idea of schedules and plans and dates. Half the time he'll remember a birthday days after it's passed while they're all cleaning up the blood from their latest mission, their latest mess.

Ianto has taken to keeping a list of such things surreptitiously, and Jack likes that he does it in much the same mode. It is, Jack knows, a method of self-defense for the young man. But Jack has a hard time blaming him, considering it started the day he almost split Ianto's head open with a military saber. Which means it was probably Alex's birthday, which he remains fairly certain was April 7th.

Alex had trained at Sandhurst prior to joining Torchwood London, prior to being sent down to deal with the seemingly eternal disaster that was and is Torchwood Three. Maybe Jack had taken to him because he was a military man; maybe it was just that he too had no love of their superiors. Jack does't know. Doesn't much care either. While they'd been colleagues and friends, laughing and conspiring far more than was seemly for two people who weren't sharing a bed, they'd often terrorized the rest of the staff by pressing each other with sabers. It's a funny thing, but time and several worlds over, and no military could find a better tool to train courage, timing, instinct and geometry than thirty-four inches of steel. Jack misses that, misses Alex and practices but once a year. It's enough though, Jack thinks; after all, Alex killed himself and not before taking the rest of that team with him.

March 24th is for lying on his back in Western Cemetery and telling stories of the stars to the wife buried there. If other spirits listen, Ianto realizes once he gets her name, Jack would never notice or care. October 18th and Jack mostly window shops for baby things, eventually buying something for a girl and then dropping it in a donation bin in all haste. June 4th he visits the zoo, whistling, one hand reaching out to ruffle the hair of a child that was never there.

August 8th is for dance clubs and alcohol that does nothing now; drunkenness being caused, of course, by mild poisoning and Jack's cells are too quick to restore themselves for that sort of pleasure to take hold. September 2nd and opera plays in his office, while October 16th is for sitting on the hood of the SUV and watching the planes land at Cardiff International. Jets have no romance and no imagination, he says; and Ianto observes that this seems to make Jack sad.

Ianto notes the detail and and all such others on the list which grows to include date and habit and mood, and when he can find it, precious, precious name. Jack may be constantly losing his past, but somehow Ianto is instinctively driven to stem that. He tries not to examine why; it's too recursive, too complex, too much about identification and things Ianto hopes he'll never have to say even if he wants to.

Jack shoots pistols, and not in the line of duty, on November 2nd, and eats lavishly and alone on the 8th.

"Now Philip and I were all about food," Jack eventually explains about that. "There are things I don't think I'll ever be able to taste without the salt of his fingers under them."

Ianto wonders what they are, as well as when and how Philip died. He wasn't Torchwood; he's not in the vaults, and so it seems rude to ask. That's the hazard of civilians.

Jack always heads down to London for the ballet in December, but the date shifts, and Ianto can't work out if it's a matter of the program, the seats or the mere demands of being the Captain. In truth, he's not even sure it's actually birthday related - maybe, ridiculously, Jack just likes the ballet - but Ianto keeps it on the list just in case and is secretly relieved that whatever it is seems to contain itself to the later half of the month.

Ianto prefers a lack of ambiguity in his private irritations.

"Are you going to put Owen on the list?" Jack asks abruptly after the man dies and then un-dies.

"The list, sir?" Ianto asks, his voice pitched slightly too high and tight in a way Jack has grown to recognize as the man's tell when he's lying. If only he'd known that when the whole Lisa thing was going on; Jack snorts at the knowledge he'll never mention, which is that Ianto only told the truth in bed then, his voice dark and gravelly and stained with sex.

"Commemoration days. Birthdays mostly. You've been able to sort that much," he clarifies, although it's clear he doesn't need to.

"I didn't mean for you --"

"I read your diary, Ianto."

"Oh. Right. Sir." He pauses. "Regularly?" He can't help but be vaguely alarmed.

Jack smiles. It's not an answer. "And I like to watch your hands."

Ianto blushes slightly, but says nothing.

"Owen?" he asks, in an attempt at refocusing them, as if Ianto's answer will help him understand the man's status, will help him understand what he's done.

"You tell me, sir. Would you care to spend your future St. Valentine's Days debating the relative merits of alien autopsy versus the use of crass pick-up lines on various chavvy girls?"

Jack hums. "Not really my thing. But I see your point." Jack frowns.

Ianto pulls a small book out of his suit jacket pocket and makes a note with a stub of pencil that seems to come from nowhere.

"As an eventuality," Ianto says with a small shrug before pocketing the simple tools of his organizational trade.

After that, Ianto adds other dates in the name of other eventualities.

Jack's family - original, Ianto reminds himself, there have surely been many - in case the man ever allows himself the remembrance or can figure out how to convert the dates.

Suzie, for whenever Jack stops wanting to kill her again and again and again and can remember that they used to fuck and laugh; that once, it was apparently just the two of them.

Gwen's and a note for grief.

Toshiko with the quick scrawl of bombs and fondness.

His own and just not the ballet followed by the unfair and out of time addendum of I miss you, which he then hastily erases and replaces with an admonition for Jack to finish his expense reports.

When the next commemoration comes, Jack takes Ianto's hand and declares it a day for riding the ferry.

"Come with?" he asks and, when Ianto is silent, offers, "I'll tell you a story."

"Jack. You don't have to."

"No, but I know what the gaps do to you."

Ianto gives an embarrassed huff of laughter.

Jack rolls his eyes, but his grin is so sincere, so fond, Ianto thinks that one or the other of them might burst from it. But the moment passes.

"Plus, I want your thoughts on something."

"What?" Ianto asks, quickly wary.

"What do I do when the whole calendar fills up?"

Ianto shrugs and pulls away from Jack's hand to touch his cheek, not mentioning that it is statistically more likely that multiple memorials will occupy single dates long before every space is filled with death and love and memories, with Jack's terrible litany of names.

"Start again" he says with a small smile, with a shrug, as if somehow he can make it easier, as if somehow the proposition is wonderful. "Just, start again."


End file.
